


The Vase

by NoGoodTuna



Category: Black Clover - Tabata Yuki (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Drama, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Heavy Angst, Jealousy, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, undiagnosed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:47:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22111300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoGoodTuna/pseuds/NoGoodTuna
Summary: Yuno wanted nothing more than to find a beautiful rose to put in the vase that he etched Asta's name on and present it to him. To honor the longstanding tradition of the kingdom by presenting his love with this physical manifestation of his feelings was something he dreamed to do.
Relationships: Asta/Mimosa Vermillion, Asta/Yuno (Black Clover)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 73





	The Vase

A glass vase etched with a name in ornate cursive writing sat perched between bouquets of freshly picked flowers, shiny black stones, and sticks of incense. A young man, Yuno, traced that name as he wondered if today would be the day that he could complete this scene with a rose that would make the feelings he harbored for his friend tangible. The chance to honor the age-old tradition of dedicating a shrine to a lover and then presenting it to them filled him with joy as it always did in the morning.

* * *

Sounds of battle echoed throughout the king’s chamber. Wizard knights aligned with wind and darkness faced off against marauders aligned with light and the tri-elements. Neither gave an inch as their attacks rocked the room. A stalemate soon gave them a brief reprieve.

“Yuno, you gotta work with me here. We can’t break through if we don’t change it up.” Asta, a spunky young man that captured Yuno’s heart, pointed his magical broadsword at the enemies. He stared at his raven-haired companion with urgency.

“I know.” Yuno, a handsome jerk of a mage, matched his gaze. “Focus.”

“I am.” Asta narrowed his eyes and lowered his blade. “I was just saying-”

“What I already know? I don’t need the obvious stated, I’m not an idiot, like you,” Yuno summoned the tiny elf-like sprite, Sylph as he broke eye contact. She was the conduit for his looming attack.

Defiant, she tugged his cheek. “Stop giving him the attention he craves! It’s not fair, especially when you only talk to me when you need me.”

“I don’t crave his attention. He craves mine, Sylph. He demanded to come with me.” Asta waggled his sword accusingly. “As he always does! I told him I don’t need to be guarded! Like I always do.”

Yuno scoffed. “You can’t be trusted to go out on your own. When last you did, you came back with broken bones from boars!”

“They weren’t just any ole boars!” Asta glared. “They were magical and could-”

He fell silent as a bright-light filled his vision. His green eyes and ashy blond hair were bathed in a magnificent light while a searing and scorching heat parched his throat and dried his skin. A massive fireball drew near. The size and heat stunned him.

A fresh refreshing breeze soon made his fluffy fleece lined cape ruffle. In front of him, a translucent white mantle fluttered in the wind. Silver bells attached to golden tassels that dangled from it chimed beautifully. Though they were soon muffled by familiar, black overgrown hair that flittered about. Yuno’s voice broke the spell that had a hold on him.

“I told you to focus,” he said as mana visualized in a viridian color flowed like wind around him. It emanated from his hand and formed a wall in front of them. The fireball collided with it and was dispersed around them.

As Asta fell silent, Yuno briefly looked over his shoulder. The appreciative look he received encouraged him to end this battle, all so he could present that vase to him. He focused the wind in his hand and shaped it into a cannonball before he expelled it. It was powerful and blasted the enemy wizard off his feet. Propelled into a wall, his body fell limp as debris rained around him.

Yuno couldn’t stare for long as a purple, almost blackish, cloud of electrified miasma doused him. He waved a hand as if to clear the air so he could breath, but he grew weak and wobbly as electrified him. He gasped and breathed it in. He coughed, no chocked, as he lost his balance and fell, but he was caught. Beyond the scream of his friend, and the ensuing laughter of the enemy, he could barely make out what happened next as his consciousness faded.

* * *

Yuno stirred awake as the softest and warmest of hands caressed his cheeks. He stared into Asta’s eyes and realized he was cradled in his arms. The contact, closeness, and sight made warmth spread across their features as they stared into each other’s eyes. Words weren’t shared between them as they searched for the words to describe this feeling.

Their moment was broken when wailing and hasty footsteps filled the air. Nash, their adopted younger sibling who hailed from their orphanage and now served as Asta’s attendant, had tears streaming down his face as he ran into the chamber. He grabbed Yuno’s hand. “Thank god. I was, when I heard Asta scream, I thought, I-” Devastated, he collapsed in a heap of tears.

“Stop crying, Nash.” Asta ruffled both Nash’s and Yuno’s hair. “I wasn’t gonna let him die. What type of wizard king would I be if I couldn’t protect someone right beside me?”

Yuno frowned as the inconsequential gesture stirred emotions he routinely ignored. Had he not been so physically drained, he would have swatted Asta’s hand aside. Nash hadn’t done anything to warrant such affection.

Asta’s expression softened as he pulled Yuno into a hug. “You’re important to me, you know?"

Yuno stuck his lip out as he turned away, he spoke under his breath. "You're only saying that because I'm a knight."

"I'm not!" Asta urged as he pulled Yuno closer. "You're more than a knight to me. Just like Mimosa is more than a knight to me. You're a friend just like her.” He flashed a smile at the female mage who silently rushed in behind Nash.

Where she giggled and covered her smile with her hand, Yuno scowled. How Asta threw these feelings and gestures to everyone around him was infuriating. His hand tightened around Nash’s and made the poor teen wince and cry. Yuno ignored him as a warm and itchy feeling irritated his throat. He coughed, groaned, and elicited looks of worry from his companions.

Mimosa, a healer, pointed her wand at him. He was wrapped in vines of aloe and chamomile. Though it soothed his body, it did little to allay the itchiness that deepened its roots in his throat. He coughed harder than before.

She tried to concentrate but grew distracted when Asta placed an appreciative hand on her shoulder. She smiled briefly before intensifying her focus. Flowers blossomed as the vines thickened. The pleasant aroma filled the air.

A prickly sensation spread throughout his throat while he watched them gazing at each other and maintaining their contact. When the slightest of red spread across their cheeks, he coughed loudly and persistently enough so that he curled inwards. The implications of their gestures and the thought that he wasn’t in Mimosa’s place hurt him far more than the coughing and hacking.

Only when Asta touched him on his shoulder did the pain vanish. “Y-Yuno?”

“Leave me alone. I’m fine.”

“No, you aren’t. You sound like you’re dying.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You do!” Asta’s voice grew mellow. “Look, no more debating. Let’s go back to the castle. I can fix that soup that you like and read you a bedtime story or sing you a lullaby. It’ll make you feel better in no time, just like it always did.”

“I never liked it,” Yuno mumbled as a pleasant warmth course through his body. Asta giving him attention was better than any aloe or chamomile.

“You did! Isn’t that right, Nash?”

Nash chuckled. “You mean how he poured the soup out when you weren’t looking?”

“He did not!” Asta blurted. “There was nowhere to pour it out, unless.”

Nash whistled coyly.

“The window!” Asta jabbed Yuno’s arm. “I should have known you’d roped Nash into it, you two always did stuff behind my back.”

Yuno almost apologized but Asta beamed as if it were all a joke. It was the smile he wore whenever he got a good but jokey idea. 

“Fine, Yuno. You leave me no choice. Fight as you might, this time I’ll feed it to you until it’s all gone.”

Yuno couldn’t voice any complaints--to get Asta all to himself for a night was a welcomed and wonderful thought.

He was pulled from his thoughts, however, when the vines wrapped around him exploded in a burst of light. Mimosa fell to a knee, exhausted.

Asta was slow to assist her as his gaze remained fixed on Yuno. His mouth hung open as if he wanted to continue the conversation, but Mimosa spoke. “He needs a doctor. There's a rash on his neck and it's spreading, and I can't stop it.”

“I don’t.” Yuno spoke with venom. He hated how she butted in. “I’m fine, rea-” He coughed.

“You’re not fine,” she urged.

He ignored her as a cough wracked his body. He didn’t care about the looks of concern he received. He needed to get away from her. She was the cause of this pain.

“Asta,” she pleaded as she tugged him.

Asta placed a hand on hers and looked at with a soft smile. He, however, remained silent.

Yuno scratched his throat as the thought that Mimosa could touch Asta as she pleased agitated him. He coughed and wheezed when Asta rubbed her hand soothingly. It was infuriating.

As they looked at him in worry, he thrust a hand out as if to tell them to leave him alone before he hobbled and wobbled to his broom. He needed to get away, to escape to fresh air, where he could breathe and not see them.

Getting away didn’t help. He hunched over and coughed once he emerged from the tomb. An earthy, leafy taste was in the back of his mouth before something wet and solid was expunged from his chest. As he caught his breath he stared at the bloody mass on the ground, in the middle of it was something akin to a red rosebud.

* * *

That evening, Yuno persistently coughed harshly as the jealousy he felt towards Mimosa intensified. The image of her and Asta smiling, blushing, and giggling at each other wouldn’t go away. Knowing that she took up residence with him in the castle and could see him whenever she desired irritated him. His anger could have been quelled if Asta maintained some distance between them, but he didn’t. He reciprocated her feelings as if she meant more to him than Yuno. The special relationship he shared with Yuno was superseded by this subordinate who should know her place.

Heavy knocking at his door drowned his coughing. He opened it with haste and paused. Before him stood Asta who held a vase filled with roses. The implication of what it meant induced a wretched and horrible coughing fit bringing him to his knees. As he hunched over, Asta wrapped an arm around him and guided him to the bed. There he rubbed his back.

Yuno’s coughing momentarily ceased but immediately returned in full force as he noticed the vase still cradled under his arm. Asta, as much as he cared for him in this moment, still harbored feelings towards Mimosa.

The thought sent Yuno thrashing and coughing and bumping Asta aside. He ignored him as he grabbed one of the few towels on his bed that wasn’t speckled with rose petals and blood like the others around them.

Asta quickly sat up and looked at him as one would a wounded cat, but otherwise remained silent. Asta seemed content to maintain the distance Yuno created.

Yuno wished Asta would have, as he usually did, ignored the distance between them and be all nosey like he often was, but seemingly, Asta was focused on the vase cradled in his arms.

When Yuno’s cough was finally muffled by a slowly reddening towel, Asta spoke as he held the vase forward as if it were magical. “What should I do about this? Never in a million years would I thought it would happen, can you believe it?”

Yuno wished he couldn’t believe it either. Feelings he wanted to act on for his friend whose name was etched into the vase that sat in the shrine just beyond their eyesight bubbled to the surface. Each and every day he’d gone through the same routine of staring at it and wondering if he could muster the courage to present it to Asta, just like Mimosa just did.

He felt a pang in his chest as he realized she had it so easy. Where she could present it to him with no consequence, he couldn’t. There was no way he could present it to not only the wizard king but a guy. To bring that sort of controversy upon the kingdom for entering this sort of taboo and forbidden relationship with him would force him to relinquish the title he strove to earn. As much as he wanted to get up then and there and present it to him, he couldn’t. He couldn’t ruin his friend’s life for his own selfish romance.

The thought that Mimosa would selfishly steal his Asta away made his throat constrict and fill with something thorny, itchy, and scratchy. He clawed at it as if he could pull it out, but he couldn’t. His skin, his bones, everything was in the way.

As a cough wracked his body knocking him into his friend, Asta dropped the vase and panicked. That panic intensified as Yuno lurched forward nearly falling off the bed. Asta grabbed him, but blood and flower petals poured from his mouth and onto his friend. Asta dropped him and screamed for Mimosa.

Yuno tried to tell him to call anyone else but her, but he couldn’t. He was too busy trying to get that tickling prickling feeling out his throat. Whatever it was moved as he saw the rose on the floor. His heart tightened as he realized that Asta would never be his, he would be hers, always and forever and there was nothing he could do. She beat him to the punch and Asta was ready to agree. The thought acted like nutrients for whatever it was in his throat. It grew and sprouted leaves, thorns, and flowers as it came out his mouth. He blacked out from the sight.

* * *

Asta placed a vase aptly filled with roses beside the many others that lined the tombstone as if they were ready to be accepted should the occupant wake up. Knowing that he never would, he sobbed for hours on end as he always did for the days, weeks, or months, he couldn’t tell anymore, since Yuno’s death from the mysterious illness. Sorrow and regret remained lodged in his mind, heart, and soul as what could have been but would never be paralyzed him.

**Author's Note:**

> I cried.
> 
> 1/7/2020: Minor updates to dialogue


End file.
